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20″ iMac (Late 2006)

LEM Staff - 2006.09.06

Industry watchers had been anticipating Apple moving the iMac to Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor, which is “up to 50% more powerful” (according to Apple) than the Core Duo used in the Early 2006 iMac. As if that wasn’t enough, Apple added the biggest iMac to date to the line, a whopping 24″ model with a 1920 x 1200 pixel display.

All four models (17″ 1.83 and 2.0 GHz, 20″ and 24″ 2.16 GHz) use a 667 MHz system bus, have three USB 2.0 ports along with at least one FireWire 400 port, gigabit ethernet, and AirPort Extreme.

There’s more variety than ever before in the iMac line. The 20″ model ships with 1 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, an 8x SuperDrive, two FireWire 400 ports, and Apple’s USB keyboard and Mighty Mouse. It also uses the ATI Radeon X1600 graphics processor with 128 MB of dedicated video memory.

For power users, Apple offered a 2.33 GHz build-to-order option.

Although you can install two 2 GB modules to achieve 4 GB of system memory, the computer can only access 3 GB of RAM, making that a smarter, lower cost upgrade option.

What You Need to Know

The stock 1 GB of system memory is good for OS X 10.4 Tiger, yet upgrading to 2-3 GB of RAM will make a big difference. Base memory is enough to run OS X 10.5 Leopard decently, and you should upgrade to at least 2 GB for really good performance. OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard can run on a 1 GB Mac but really cries out for 2 GB of memory and is unleashed with 3 GB. OS X 10.7 Lion wants at least 2 GB of RAM.

Intel-based Macs use a partitioning scheme known as GPT. Only Macintel models can boot from GPT hard drives. Both PowerPC and Intel Macs can boot from APM (Apple’s old partitioning scheme) hard drives, which is the format you must use to create a universal boot drive in Leopard. PowerPC Macs running any version of the Mac OS prior to 10.4.2 cannot mount GPT volumes. PowerPC Macs won’t let you install OS X to a USB drive or choose it as your startup volume, although there is a work around for that.

Details

introduced 2006.09.06 at US$1,499; replaced by a faster model on 2007.08.07.

Drives

Hard drive bus: 1.5 Gbps SATA Rev. 1

Hard drive: 250 GB 7200 rpm SATA drive

Optical drive bus: Ultra ATA/100 (operates at ATA/33)

SuperDrive: writes DVD±R discs at up to 8x speed, dual layer at up to 2.4x; DVD±RW at up to 4x; reads DVDs at up to 8x, writes CD-R discs at up to 24x, writes CD-RW discs at up to 8x, reads CDs at up to 24x

Expansion

USB: 3 USB 2.0 ports

FireWire 400: 2 ports, 8W shared output

Modem: optional 56 kbps USB modem supports v.92

Ethernet: 10/100/gigabit

WiFi: 802.11g AirPort Extreme included

Bluetooth 2.0: included

IR receiver: supports Apple Remote (included)

Microphone: internal

Physical

H x W x D: 18.6 x 19.4 x 7.4 in/47.2 x 49.3 x 18.9 cm

Weight: 22 lb/10 kg

Power supply: 180W

CPU Upgrades

CPU can be replaced with faster Socket M Core 2 Duo.

Online Resources

The iMac Legacy: After the G3, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 2008.08.15. The G3 iMac influenced the whole industry, but Apple continued to move forward with innovative designs using G4, G5, and Intel processors.

Know Your Mac’s Upgrade Options, Phil Herlihy, The Usefulness Equation, 2008.08.26. Any Mac can be upgraded, but it’s a question of what can be upgraded – RAM, hard drive, video, CPU – and how far it can be upgraded.

The Road Ahead: 64-bit Computing, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 2009.08.19. Personal computers started with 8-bit CPUs, Macs started out with a 24-bit operating system, and 32-bit computing is starting to give way to 64 bits.

Computer disaster ends happily, Alan Zisman, Zis Mac, 2009.08.05. The iMac was getting slower and slower, and Disk Utility kept trying to fix the same problems. With a new hard drive, the iMac is running as well as ever.

Why You Should Partition Your Mac’s Hard Drive, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 2008.12.11. “At the very least, it makes sense to have a second partition with a bootable version of the Mac OS, so if you have problems with your work partition, you can boot from the ’emergency’ partition to run Disk Utility and other diagnostics.”

How to clone Mac OS X to a new hard drive, Simon Royal, Tech Spectrum, 2008.10.07. Whether you want to put a bigger, faster drive in your Mac or clone OS X for use in another Mac, here’s the simple process.

Tiger vs. Leopard: Which is best for you?, Simon Royal, Tech Spectrum, 2008.09.22. Two great versions of Mac OS X, but unless your Mac is well above the minimum spec for Leopard and has lots of RAM, stick with Tiger.

The Compressed Air Keyboard Repair, Charles W Moore, Miscellaneous Ramblings, 2008.07.24. If your keyboard isn’t working as well as it once did, blasting under the keys with compressed air may be the cure.

Windows on Macs: Three paths for integration, Jason Packer, Macs in the Enterprise, 2008.05.14. Mac users have three routes for running Windows apps: Run Windows using Boot Camp or virtualization, or use a compatibility layer such as WINE.

The 2008 Penryn iMac value equation, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 2008.04.29. Comparing prices, features, and performance, three of four new models are value champions, and there are some surprising refurb values as well.

The gaping hole in Apple’s desktop line, Tommy Thomas, Welcome to Macintosh, 2007.07.13. $599 for a Mac mini with very limited expandability, $999 for an iMac with limited expandability, or $2,200 for a the very expandable Mac Pro.

The annoying white iMac, Andrew J Fishkin, Best Tools for the Job, 2007.02.15. From a design standpoint, the iMac is brilliant, but the massive amounts of white plastic can distract you from what’s on the display.